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BRUNSWICK, Maine (AP) — Patty Wagstaff is a Hollywood stunt pilot, three-time U.S. aerobatic champion, inductee to the National Aviation Hall of Fame and favorite on the air show circuit. One of her tricked-out planes is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
But this weekend, she's grounded.
Federal budget cuts that eliminated military flying acts triggered the cancellation of dozens of air shows, meaning lost income for performers, air show announcers, concessionaires, vendors and others who depend on air shows and the millions of spectators.
The cancellations also mean disappointed fans, fewer events that celebrate aviation and inspire youngsters and lost military recruiting opportunities.
"This is as American as apple pie," said Sean Tucker, another top aerobatic pilot, from Salinas, Calif. "It's the Indianapolis 500, the Fourth of July, and 'Top Gun' rolled into one."
Air shows pump about $1.5 billion into the economy and draw nearly three times more spectators than NASCAR events, according to the International Council of Air Shows.
And the biggest acts are the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds, the precision flying teams whose performances were abruptly canceled April 1, along with the Army skydiving team, military flyovers, demonstration flights and even static displays.
The cancellations caused by automatic budget cuts known as sequestration sent ripples through the industry, because the jet teams anchor most shows in which they perform.
Without them, organizers of major air shows like Wings over Wayne at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina and Skyfest 2013 at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state scheduled for this weekend, coincidentally on Armed Forces Day, opted to cancel.
Large air shows like those feature pilots pulling seemingly death-defying maneuvers in all manner of aircraft from biplanes to jets, precision formation flying, skydivers jumping from planes and, of course, screeching military jets pulling high-G maneuvers.
One of Wagstaff's signature moves is to use her plane's propeller to clip a ribbon that's stretched 22 feet above the runway — while flying upside down.
"The whole thing is just sad," said Wagstaff, of St. Augustine, Fla., who was scheduled to perform at Wings over Wayne. "I really believe that air shows are good for aviation. They expose kids to aviation, and it's the only place where you can go and touch an airplane, sit in the cockpit, talk to the pilots."
All told, 64 air shows including the Great State of Maine Air Show that depended on military participation have canceled, accounting for a loss of nearly a third of air show revenue, and the figure could go as high as 100, said John Cudahy, the air show council's executive director.
Industry insiders believe the military jet teams will be flying again next year, but there's no guarantee from the military or Congress.
It's a huge disappointment to fans like Candace Muehleisen, a real estate broker who has attended nearly 20 air shows over the years in California and Maine, where she now lives, always arriving early to ensure she's on the front row.
Military jet pilots inspire spectators with their awe-inspiring skill while showing off the military's capabilities for taxpayers, Muehleisen said.
"It's a very positive thing for young people, just to see the skill and the beauty of what these guys can do and the training they get. It's a really, really good thing," she said.
Not everyone shares that view.
Critics like Bruce Gagnon say air shows pollute the environment, waste money and glorify war.
"It's a recruiting gimmick — a very expensive recruiting gimmick, and we think it's part of this, sadly, growing culture of militarism in our country," said Gagnon, a peace activist from Bath who served in the Air Force in the Vietnam era.
Not all air shows are being canceled. And many in the air show business will do fine this summer.
Tucker, who's performing over Memorial Day weekend at the Jones Beach Air Show in New York, said corporate sponsors are trying to line up smaller events to fill his schedule after eight of his 20 shows were canceled.
For others, it's a bigger deal.
In Tallahassee, Fla., Bob Anderson and his family operate a six-figure business selling T-shirts at air shows. Business was so good for his product line that focused almost exclusively on the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds that he upgraded to a motor home for his seasonal business travel.
Instead, the motor home is parked, and he's installing floors.
"People are very bitter now," he said. "I'm very saddened by everything that's going on because we've worked hard to get to where we are, and we've been shut down by no fault of our own."
Air show announcer Rob Reider, of Cincinnati, lost half his season, which is his primary source of income. "Am I angry? Yes, because it's hurting me," he said. "If something doesn't brighten up by the end of this year, I'll be looking to do other things and air shows will become a backburner business."
The losses carry on down the line to the concessionaires who feed spectators, vendors who provide hundreds of portable toilets, rental car companies that supply vehicles, hotels that house pilots and crews, and providers of aviation fuel.
In Brunswick, the canceled Great State of Maine Air Show had a budget of about $750,000. Last year's show paid out $31,000 for motel rooms for Air Force Thunderbirds team alone.
"It's a little issue on a national level, but it's a big issue locally. It's a big weekend for us," said Steve Levesque, executive director of the agency that organizes the show. "A lot of people were angry that we shut it down, but we didn't have any other choice."
For Reider and the pilots like Tucker and Wagstaff, the air shows cancellations mean losses that aren't easily calculated.
The shows tend to inspire young people, serve as a demonstration and recruiting tool for the military, and provide wholesome entertainment for families, they said.
"The metaphor of flight is about pushing boundaries; that's what we do as Americans," Tucker said. "It really disappoints me that because of politics, opportunities to be patriotic have been lost to millions and millions of people. What's the price of that?"


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Obama: Nuclear deal blocks Iran's path to bomb
Iran struck a historic deal Sunday with the United States and five other world powers, agreeing to a temporary freeze of its nuclear program in the most significant agreement between Washington and Tehran after more than three decades of estrangement.
The deal commits Iran to curb its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for limited and gradual sanctions relief. The six-month period will give diplomats time to negotiate a more sweeping agreement.
It builds on the momentum of the public dialogue opened during September's annual U.N. gathering, which included a 15-minute phone conversation between President Barack Obama and Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani.
Obama hailed the pact's provisions, which include curbs on Iran's enrichment and other projects that could be used to make nuclear arms, as key to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear threat.
"Simply put, they cut off Iran's most likely paths to a bomb," he told reporters.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led his country's delegation, called on both sides to see the agreement as an "opportunity to end an unnecessary crisis and open new horizons."
But initial reaction in Israel was strongly negative. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear program, said the deal was based on "Iranian deception and self-delusion."
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has loudly criticized the agreement, saying the international community is giving up too much to Iran, which it believes will retain the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and threaten Israel.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who joined the final negotiations along with the foreign ministers of Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, said the pact will make U.S. allies in the Middle East, including Israel, safer.
"Agreement in Geneva," he tweeted. "First step makes world safer. More work now."
The deal marks a milestone between the two countries, which broke diplomatic ties 34 years ago when Iran's Islamic revolution climaxed in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Since then, relations between the two countries have been frigid to hostile — until the recent outreach between the two presidents.
Although the deal lowered tensions between the two countries, friction points remain — most notably Iran's support of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. The United States also has said Iran supports terrorism throughout the region and commits widespread human rights violations.
The Geneva negotiations followed secret face-to-face talks between the U.S. and Iran over the past year, The Associated Press has learned. The discussions, held in the Persian Gulf nation of Oman and elsewhere, were kept hidden even from America's closest allies, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago.
A White House statement said the deal limits Iran's existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, which can be turned into the fissile core of nuclear arms.
The statement also said the accord curbs the number and capabilities of the centrifuges used to enrich and limits Iran ability to "produce weapons-grade plutonium" from a reactor in the advanced stages of construction.
The statement also said Iran's nuclear program will be subject to "increased transparency and intrusive monitoring."
"Taken together, these first step measures will help prevent Iran from using the cover of negotiations to continue advancing its nuclear program as we seek to negotiate a long-term, comprehensive solution that addresses all of the international community's concerns," said the statement.
Since it was revealed in 2003, Iran's enrichment program has grown from a few dozen enriching centrifuges to more than 18,000 installed and more than 10,000 operating. The machines have produced tons of low-enriched uranium, which can be turned into weapons grade material.
Iran also has stockpiled almost 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of higher-enriched uranium in a form that can be converted more quickly to fissile warhead material than the low-enriched uranium. Its supply is nearly enough for one bomb.
In return for Iran's nuclear curbs, the White House statement promised "limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible (sanctions) relief" to Iran, noting that "the key oil, banking, and financial sanctions architecture, remains in place." And it said any limited sanctions relief will be revoked and new penalties enacted if Iran fails to meet its commitments.
Those conditions have been highlighted by the U.S. administration in its efforts to persuade Congress to hold off on any new sanctions and give the accord a chance to prove its worth. But one influential member of Congress was quick to criticize the deal.
Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed "serious concerns," saying the United States was "relieving Iran of the sanctions pressure built up over years," while allowing Tehran to "keep the key elements of its nuclear weapons-making capacity."
Obama hailed the deal as putting "substantial limitations" on a nuclear program that the United States and its allies fear could be turned to nuclear weapons use.
"While today's announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal," Obama said. "For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back."

subset: commoncrawl


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Today in the news: Biden says gun violence prevention 'critically important'
Quote of note
"I want to make it clear that we are not going to get caught up in the notion (that) unless we can do everything we're going to do nothing. It's critically important (that) we act." - Vice President Joe Biden. Biden heads a committee charged with drafting proposals on preventing gun violence after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. According to The Associated Press, Biden has met with groups from various areas affected by gun violence and will meet with the NRA Thursday. The vice president is expected to present policy proposals to the president at the end of the month.
Hot video: Man dies after giant inflatable ball, or Zorb, rolls off cliff
News to know
At least 57 people were injured in a ferry crash in Lower Manhattan, CNN reports. A Manhattan-bound ferry from New Jersey crashed into the dock at around 8:45 EST Wednesday morning.
Several people were taken away on stretchers after they were thrown several feet by the jolt of impact.
The National Transportation Safety Board reported that it was sending investigators to determine the cause of the crash, which has not yet been determined.
GateHouse News Service


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For more than two years, the Linux operating system has contained a high-severity vulnerability that gives untrusted users with restricted accounts nearly unfettered "root" access over machines, including servers running in shared Web hosting facilities and other sensitive environments. Surprisingly, most users remain wide open even now, more than a month after maintainers of the open-source OS quietly released an update that patched the gaping hole.
The severity of the bug, which resides in the Linux kernel's "perf," or performance counters subsystem, didn't become clear until Tuesday, when attack code exploiting the vulnerability became publicly available (note: some content on this site is not considered appropriate in many work environments). The new script can be used to take control of servers operated by many shared Web hosting providers, where dozens or hundreds of people have unprivileged accounts on the same machine. Hackers who already have limited control over a Linux machine—for instance, by exploiting a vulnerability in a desktop browser or a Web application—can also use the bug to escalate their privileges to root. The flaw affects versions of the Linux kernel from 2.6.37 to 3.8.8 that have been compiled with the CONFIG_PERF_EVENTS kernel configuration option.
"Because there's a public exploit already available, an attacker would simply need to download and run this exploit on a target machine," Dan Rosenberg, a senior security researcher at Azimuth Security, told Ars in an e-mail. "The exploit may not work out-of-the-box on every affected machine, in which case it would require some fairly straightforward tweaks (for someone with exploit development experience) to work properly."
The fix to the Linux kernel was published last month. Its documentation did not mention that the code patched a critical vulnerability that could jeopardize the security of organizations running Linux in highly sensitive environments. This lack of security advisories has been standard practice for years among Linus Torvalds and other developers of the Linux kernel—and has occasionally been the subject of intense criticism from some in security circles.
Now that a fix is available in the kernel, it will be folded into all of the affected stable kernel releases offered by kernel.org, which maintains the Linux core code. Individual distributions are expected to apply the fix to their kernels and publish security updates in the coming days.
Additional details of the bug are available here, here, here, and here. People running vulnerable machines with untrusted user accounts should check with their distributors to find out when a patch will be available and what steps can be taken in the meantime. One user of a Red Hat Linux distribution posted temporary mitigation steps here, although at time of writing, Ars was unable to confirm that they worked. Readers are encouraged to post other mitigation advice in comments.
Article updated to add warning in second paragraph.


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The White House has told the Washington Times that president Barack Obama will not be available to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener Monday at Nationals Park.
It had been previously reported that Barack Obama would attend, provided his schedule didn't change because of world events. The Nationals have avoided promoting his presence because of the uncertainty, which remained until today.
Rubbing salt in the wound, the president will welcome the visiting Philadelphia Phillies to the White House the next day.
Count me as one profoundly disappointed Nationals fan. I don't relish the added security that a presidential appearance brings to the park, but Obama has an opportunity to revive a 100-year-old tradition of sitting presidents throwing out the first pitch at the DC home opener. Let's hope the nation's #1 sports fan doesn't wait until next year for an opportunity to see the Nationals play at home (and maybe even adopt the Nats as his new home team).
Open question: Who will the Nats line up as Obama's replacement?
Photo courtesy of flickr user jurvetson


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ESAMI is a premier management development centre whose mandate is to improve performance and management effectiveness of its clients through Management training, Consultancy and Advisory Services among others. Over the past 35 years, ESAMI has effectively carried out its mandate by providing tailored and customized training as well as consultancy and advisory services over and above the open programmes that it runs every year throughout Africa.
ESAMI has the capacity and experience to deliver practical, high quality training for its clientele within their own premises or preferred venue, meeting specific requirements and focusing the training on issues that are most relevant to the organisations. Our tailored programmes are designed with consideration of customers' specific needs and are conducted at a venue convenient to the customer. There is growing demand for customized training as they are tailored to close specific capacity gaps in organisations. With such programmes, the client has the flexibility to determine the duration of the training, programme venue and topics to be covered.
The benefits of our customized programmes include:
While it is important to build human capacities by unlocking the full potential of the people or individuals at the organisational level through management training, it is equally important and logically consistent that the capacity of the organisations be enhanced. ESAMI accomplishes this noble task largely through Management Consultancy Services whereby process consultancy is used to help organisations improve their structural dynamics and thus harness development and shape the skills and efforts of their managers and staff. Consultancy as a management intervention tool is offered by ESAMI for the purposes of institutional development and enhancement of cost-effective management practices and procedures. The full range of services provided to organisations for institutional development consists of all the areas in which ESAMI runs programmes for management training and development. This hand-holding makes the organisation effectively learn to cope with its problems and opportunities largely through its own efforts. This way it avoids becoming irresponsive to the environment and over-dependent on outside help.
Over the years ESAMI has secured and successfully done consultancy assignments for various government agencies, parastatal and private sector organisations in African and international institutions operating in Africa. Some of the recent assignments are in the following involved:


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What to know before you refinance your home
With lower interest rates available, home owners might be tempted to refinance their mortgages.
Before you start the refinancing process, keep these tips in mind.
– Calculate how long it will take you to break even. There are often high costs associated with refinancing a mortgage. To find out if you're really saving in the long run, calculate how long it will take to recover the costs spent on the refinancing by figuring out how much you're actually saving a month.
– Opt for a fixed-rate mortgage. Financial experts recommend getting a fixed-rate mortgage rather than an adjustable-rate mortgage.
– Know how long you want your mortgage for. Homeowners can try to reduce the length of their mortgage by paying more each month instead of signing up for a 30-year mortgage. Others prefer smaller payments so they might want a 30-year mortgage. Financial experts say 15-year mortgages are becoming more popular with the lower interest rates, but they warn that only people with good job security should opt for a 15-year loan because it will make the monthly payments high.
– Do you need mortgage insurance? Because the prices of homes have dropped over the past several years, many people may find themselves owing more on their loan than their home is worth. People in this position may need mortgage insurance.


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Abdominal Angiogram
(Angiogram-Abdominal, Arteriogram-Abdominal, Celiac and Mesenteric Arteriography, Abdominal Arteriography, Abdominal Angiography)
Procedure overview
What is an abdominal angiogram?
An angiogram, also called an arteriogram, is an X-ray image of the blood vessels. It is performed to evaluate various vascular conditions, such as an aneurysm (ballooning of a blood vessel), stenosis (narrowing of a blood vessel), or blockages.
An abdominal angiogram is an angiogram of the blood vessels of the abdomen. An abdominal angiogram may be used to assess the blood flow to organs of the abdomen, such as the liver and spleen. It may also be used to deliver medication into structures of the abdomen to treat cancer or hemorrhage.
Fluoroscopy is often used during an abdominal angiogram. Fluoroscopy is the study of moving body structures, similar to an X-ray "movie." A continuous X-ray beam is passed through the body part being examined, and is transmitted to a TV-like monitor so that the body part and its motion can be seen in detail.
How is an angiogram performed?
In order to obtain an X-ray image of a blood vessel, an intraarterial (IA) access to a blood vessel is necessary so that a contrast dye can be injected into the body's circulatory system. Contrast dye causes the blood vessels to appear opaque on the X-ray image, thus allowing the doctor to better visualize the structure of the vessel(s) under examination. Dye is injected into specific blood vessels in order to examine a particular area of circulation more closely, the procedure is referred to as superselective angiography.
Many arteries can be examined by an angiogram, including the arterial systems of the legs, kidneys, brain, and heart.
For an abdominal angiogram, access may be obtained through a large artery, such as the femoral artery in the groin. Once access is obtained, the contrast dye is injected and a series of X-ray pictures is made. These X-ray images show the arterial blood vessel structures and blood flow in the abdomen.
Because of the development and improvement of diagnostic procedures, such as computed tomography (CT scan), ultrasound, and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, abdominal angiography is used less than it was some years ago. However, angiography is preferred in certain situations.
Other related procedures that may be used to diagnose abdominal problems include abdominal X-rays, CT scan of the abdomen, and abdominal ultrasound. Please see these procedures for additional information.
Reasons for the procedure
An abdominal angiogram may be performed to detect abnormalities of the blood vessels within the abdomen or of the abdominal organs. Such abnormalities may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Stenosis (constriction or narrowing) or vasospasm (a spasm of the blood vessel)
Arteriovenous malformation (an abnormal connection between the arteries and veins)
Thrombosis (a blood clot within a blood vessel) or occlusion (blockage of a blood vessel)
Other conditions that may be detected by an abdominal angiogram include tumors, hemorrhage, cirrhosis, inflammation, and the invasion of a tumor into the blood vessels. Angiography may be used to deliver medications directly into tissue or an organ for treatment, such as clotting medication to the site of hemorrhage or cancer medication into a tumor.
An abdominal angiogram may be recommended after a previous procedure, such as a CT scan, indicates the need for further information.
There may be other reasons for your doctor to recommend an abdominal angiogram.
Risks of the procedure
You may want to ask your doctor about the amount of radiation used during the procedure and the risks related to your particular situation. It is a good idea to keep a record of your past history of radiation exposure, such as previous scans and other types of X-rays, so that you can inform your doctor. Risks associated with radiation exposure may be related to the cumulative number of X-ray examinations and/or treatments over a long period of time.
If you are pregnant or suspect that you may be pregnant, you should notify your health care provider. Radiation exposure during pregnancy may lead to birth defects.
There is a risk for allergic reaction to the dye. Patients who are allergic to or sensitive to medications, contrast dye, or iodine should notify their doctor. Also, patients with kidney failure or other kidney problems should notify their doctor.
Because the procedure involves the blood vessels and blood flow of the abdomen, there is a small risk for complications involving the abdomen. These complications may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Hemorrhage due to puncture of a blood vessel
Injury to nerves
Thrombus. A clot in the blood vessel.
Hematoma. An area of swelling caused by a collection of blood.
Organ (for example, kidney) damage
Allergic reaction
There may be other risks depending on your medical condition. Be sure to discuss any concerns with your doctor prior to the procedure.
Before the procedure
Your doctor will explain the procedure to you and offer you the opportunity to ask any questions that you might have about the procedure.
You will be asked to sign a consent form that gives permission to do the procedure. Read the form carefully and ask questions if something is not clear.
Notify your doctor if you have ever had a reaction to any contrast, or if you are allergic to iodine.
Notify your doctor if you are sensitive to or are allergic to any medications, latex, tape, and anesthetic agents (local and general).
You will need to fast for a certain period of time before the procedure. Your doctor will notify you how long to fast, whether for a few hours or overnight.
Notify your doctor if you are pregnant or suspect you may be pregnant.
Notify your doctor of all medications (prescribed and over-the-counter) and herbal supplements that you are taking.
Notify your doctor if you have a history of bleeding disorders or if you are taking any anticoagulant (blood-thinning) medications, aspirin, or other medications that affect blood clotting. It may be necessary for you to stop these medications prior to the procedure.
Your doctor may request a blood test prior to the procedure to determine how long it takes your blood to clot. Other blood tests may be done as well.
You may receive a sedative prior to the procedure if necessary. You may also receive an anticholinergic medication, which acts to slow down the production of saliva in the mouth, inhibit the production of acid in the stomach, and slow down the activities of the intestinal tract, among other effects. If you receive this medication, you may notice that your mouth feels dry.
Depending on the site used for injection of the contrast, the recovery period may last up to 12 to 24 hours. You should be prepared to spend the night if necessary.
Based on your medical condition, your doctor may request other preparations.
During the procedure
An abdominal angiogram may be performed on an outpatient basis or as part of your stay in the hospital. Procedures may vary depending on your condition and your doctor's practices.
Generally, an abdominal angiogram follows this process:
You will be asked to remove any clothing, jewelry, or other objects that may interfere with the procedure.
You will be given a gown to wear.
You will be asked to empty your bladder prior to the start of the procedure.
You will be positioned on the X-ray table.
An intravenous (IV) line will be inserted in your arm or hand.
You may be connected to an EKG monitor that records the electrical activity of the heart and monitors the heart during the procedure using small, adhesive electrodes. Your vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate) will be monitored during the procedure.
The radiologist will check your pulses below the injection site and mark them with a marker so that the circulation to the limb below the site can be checked after the procedure.
A line will be inserted into an artery in your groin after the skin is cleansed and a local anesthetic is injected. On occasion, an artery in the elbow area of the arm may be used. If the groin or arm site is used, the site will be shaved prior to insertion of the line. If the arm site is used, a blood pressure cuff will be applied to the arm below the site and inflated to prevent flow of the contrast into the lower arm.
Once the needle has been placed, a catheter (a long, thin tube) will be inserted into the artery at the groin or arm site. Fluoroscopy may be used to verify the location of the catheter within the abdomen.
An injection of contrast will be given. You may experience some effects when the dye is injected into the line. These effects include a flushing sensation, a salty or metallic taste in the mouth, a brief headache, or nausea and/or vomiting. These effects usually last for a few moments.
You should notify the radiologist if you experience any breathing difficulties, sweating, numbness, or heart palpitations.
After the contrast is injected, a series of X-rays will be taken.
Depending on the study being performed, there may be one or more additional injections of contrast.
Once sufficient information has been obtained, the catheter will be removed and pressure will be applied over the area to keep the artery from bleeding.
After the site stops bleeding, a dressing will be applied to the site. A sandbag or other heavy item may be placed over the site for a period of time to prevent further bleeding or the formation of a hematoma at the site.
After the procedure
After the procedure, you will be taken to the recovery room for observation. The circulation and sensation of the leg where the injection catheter was inserted will be monitored. A nurse will monitor your vital signs and the injection site.
You will remain flat in bed in a recovery room for several hours after the procedure. If the groin or arm site was used, the leg or arm on the side of the injection site will be kept straight for up to 12 hours.
You may be given pain medication for pain or discomfort related to the injection site or to having to lie flat and still for a prolonged period.
You will be encouraged to drink water and other fluids to help flush the contrast from your body.
You may resume your usual diet and activities after the procedure, unless your doctor advises you differently.
When you have completed the recovery period, you may be returned to your hospital room or discharged to your home. If this procedure was performed as an outpatient, you should plan to have another person drive you home.
Home instructions
Once at home, you should monitor the injection site for bleeding. A small bruise is normal, as is an occasional drop of blood at the site.
If the groin or arm was used, you should monitor the leg or arm for changes in temperature or color, pain, numbness, tingling, or loss of function of the limb.
Drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration and to help pass the contrast dye.
You may be advised not to do any strenuous activities or take a hot bath or shower for a period of time after the procedure.
Notify your doctor to report any of the following:
Fever and/or chills
Increased pain, redness, swelling, or bleeding or other drainage from the groin injection site
Coolness, numbness and/or tingling, or other changes in the affected extremity
Your doctor may give you additional instructions after the procedure, depending on your particular situation.
Online resources
The content provided here is for informational purposes only, and was not designed to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease, or replace the professional medical advice you receive from your doctor. Please consult your health care provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your condition.
This page contains links to other websites with information about this procedure and related health conditions. We hope you find these sites helpful, but please remember we do not control or endorse the information presented on these websites, nor do these sites endorse the information contained here.
American Gastroenterological Association
National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)


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Alzheimer's Disease
What is Alzheimer's disease?
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that occurs when nerve cells in the brain die. The disease often results in the following behaviors:
Impaired memory, thinking, and behavior
Personality and behavior changes
Impaired judgment
Impaired communication
Inability to follow directions
Language deterioration
Impaired thought processes that involve visual and spatial awareness
Emotional apathy
With Alzheimer's disease, motor function is often preserved.
When Alzheimer's was first identified by German doctor Alois Alzheimer in 1906, it was considered a rare disorder. Today Alzheimer's disease is recognized as the most common cause of dementia (a disorder in which mental functions deteriorate and break down). An estimated 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. According to the Alzheimer's Association, this number includes 5.1 million people over the age of 65, as well as 200,000 to 500,000 people younger than 65 who have early-onset Alzheimer's and other types of dementias.
How is Alzheimer's different from other forms of dementia?
Alzheimer's disease is distinguished from other forms of dementia by characteristic changes in the brain that are visible only upon microscopic examination during autopsy. Brains affected by Alzheimer's disease often show presence of the following:
Fiber tangles within nerve cells (neurofibrillary tangles)
Clusters of degenerating nerve endings (neuritic plaques)
Another characteristic of Alzheimer's disease is the reduced production of certain brain chemicals necessary for communication between nerve cells, especially acetylcholine, as well as norepinephrine, serotonin, and somatostatin.
What causes Alzheimer's disease?
Although intense investigation has been underway for many years, the causes of Alzheimer's disease are not entirely known. The National Institute on Aging says that suspected causes often include the following:
Age and family history
Certain genes
Abnormal protein deposits in the brain
Other risk and environmental factors
Immune system problems
What are the warning signs or symptoms of Alzheimer's disease?
According to the Alzheimer's Association, the following are the most common symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. However, each individual may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
Memory loss that affects job skills, especially short-term memory loss
Difficulty performing familiar tasks
Problems with language
Disorientation to time and place
Poor or decreased judgment
Problems with abstract thinking
Misplacing things
Changes in mood or behavior
Changes in personality
Loss of initiative
Loss of ability to recognize who people are, even people well known to the individual, such as his or her child or spouse, when the disease progresses to a severe stage
The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease may resemble other medical conditions or problems. Always consult your doctor for a diagnosis.
How is Alzheimer's diagnosed?
There is not a single, comprehensive test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. By ruling out other conditions through a process of elimination, doctors, or other specialists, can obtain a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease with approximately 90 percent accuracy. However, the only way to confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is through autopsy.
Examination and evaluation are essential in determining whether the dementia is the result of a treatable illness. In addition to a complete medical history and extensive neurological motor and sensory exam, diagnostic procedures for Alzheimer's disease may include the following:
Mental status test. This is a brief and simple test of memory and some other common cognitive or thinking skills; it is usually part of a complete neurological exam
Neuropsychological testing
Blood tests
Lumbar puncture (spinal tap). A procedure performed by inserting a hollow needle into the lower back (lumbar spine)
Urinalysis. Laboratory examination of urine for various cells and chemicals, such as red blood cells, white blood cells, infection, or excessive protein
Chest X-ray. A diagnostic test which uses invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs onto film
Electroencephalogram (EEG). A procedure that records the brain's continuous electrical activity by means of electrodes attached to the scalp
Computed tomography scan (also called a CT or CAT scan). A diagnostic imaging procedure that uses a combination of X-rays and computer technology to produce horizontal, or axial, images (often called slices) of the body. A CT scan shows detailed images of any part of the body, including the bones, muscles, fat, and organs. CT scans are more detailed than general X-rays.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A diagnostic procedure that uses a combination of large magnets, radiofrequencies, and a computer to produce detailed images of organs and structures within the body
Genetic testing. Some genetic testing is available, especially in some research settings. Because there is no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer's, the decision to undergo genetic testing is one that requires careful consideration and counseling with a specialist in genetics.
Can Alzheimer's disease be prevented?
Because the cause of the disease is unknown, there are no prevention protocols to follow at this time. And, because the controllable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease are unknown, it is not yet possible to reduce the chances of developing the disease.
What is the treatment for Alzheimer's?
Specific treatment for Alzheimer's disease will be determined by your doctor based on:
Your age, overall health, and medical history
Extent of the disease
Your tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies
Expectations for the course of the disease
Your opinion or preference
At this time, there is no cure for Alzheimer's, no way of slowing down the progression of this disease, and no treatment available to reverse the deterioration of Alzheimer's disease. New research findings give reason for hope, and several drugs are being studied in clinical trials to determine if they can slow the progress of the disease or improve memory for a period of time.
There are some medications available to assist in managing some of the most troubling symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, including the following:
Behavioral disturbance
In managing the disease, physical exercise and social activity are important, as are proper nutrition, health maintenance, and a calm and well-structured environment.
What are Alzheimer's rehabilitation programs?
The rehabilitation program for people with Alzheimer's differs depending on the symptoms, expression, and progression of the disease, and the fact that making a diagnosis of Alzheimer's is so difficult. These variables determine the amount and type of assistance needed for the Alzheimer's individual and family.
With Alzheimer's rehabilitation, it is important to remember that, although any skills lost will not be regained, the caregiving team must keep in mind the following considerations:
To manage the disease, plan a balanced program of physical exercise, social activity, proper nutrition, and health maintenance activities.
Plan daily activities that help to provide structure, meaning, and accomplishment for the individual.
As functions are lost, adapt activities and routines to allow the individual to participate as much as possible.
Keep activities familiar and satisfying.
Allow the individual to complete as many things by himself or herself as possible. The caregiver may need to initiate an activity, but allow the individual to complete it as much as he or she can.
Provide "cues" for desired behavior (for example, label drawers, cabinets, and closets according to their contents).
Keep the individual out of harm's way by removing all safety risks (for example, car keys and matches).
As a caregiver (full-time or part-time), understand your own physical and emotional limitations.


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Hi guys,submitted by getmrmarket to Forex [link] [comments]
I have been using reddit for years in my personal life (not trading!) and wanted to give something back in an area where i am an expert.
I worked at an investment bank for seven years and joined them as a graduate FX trader so have lots of professional experience, by which i mean I was trained and paid by a big institution to trade on their behalf. This is very different to being a full-time home trader, although that is not to discredit those guys, who can accumulate a good amount of experience/wisdom through self learning.
When I get time I'm going to write a mid-length posts on each topic for you guys along the lines of how i was trained. I guess there would be 15-20 topics in total so about 50-60 posts. Feel free to comment or ask questions.
The first topic is Risk Management and we'll cover it in three parts
Part I
Why it mattersThe first rule of making money through trading is to ensure you do not lose money. Look at any serious hedge fund's website and they'll talk about their first priority being "preservation of investor capital."
You have to keep it before you grow it.
Strangely, if you look at retail trading websites, for every one article on risk management there are probably fifty on trade selection. This is completely the wrong way around.
The great news is that this stuff is pretty simple and process-driven. Anyone can learn and follow best practices.
Seriously, avoiding mistakes is one of the most important things: there's not some holy grail system for finding winning trades, rather a routine and fairly boring set of processes that ensure that you are profitable, despite having plenty of losing trades alongside the winners.
Capital and position sizingThe first thing you have to know is how much capital you are working with. Let's say you have $100,000 deposited. This is your maximum trading capital. Your trading capital is not the leveraged amount. It is the amount of money you have deposited and can withdraw or lose.
Position sizing is what ensures that a losing streak does not take you out of the market.
A rule of thumb is that one should risk no more than 2% of one's account balance on an individual trade and no more than 8% of one's account balance on a specific theme. We'll look at why that's a rule of thumb later. For now let's just accept those numbers and look at examples.
So we have $100,000 in our account. And we wish to buy EURUSD. We should therefore not be risking more than 2% which $2,000.
We look at a technical chart and decide to leave a stop below the monthly low, which is 55 pips below market. We'll come back to this in a bit. So what should our position size be?
We go to the calculator page, select Position Size and enter our details. There are many such calculators online - just google "Pip calculator".
So the appropriate size is a buy position of 363,636 EURUSD. If it reaches our stop level we know we'll lose precisely $2,000 or 2% of our capital.
You should be using this calculator (or something similar) on every single trade so that you know your risk.
Now imagine that we have similar bets on EURJPY and EURGBP, which have also broken above moving averages. Clearly this EUR-momentum is a theme. If it works all three bets are likely to pay off. But if it goes wrong we are likely to lose on all three at once. We are going to look at this concept of correlation in more detail later.
The total amount of risk in our portfolio - if all of the trades on this EUR-momentum theme were to hit their stops - should not exceed $8,000 or 8% of total capital. This allows us to go big on themes we like without going bust when the theme does not work.
As we'll see later, many traders only win on 40-60% of trades. So you have to accept losing trades will be common and ensure you size trades so they cannot ruin you.
Similarly, like poker players, we should risk more on trades we feel confident about and less on trades that seem less compelling. However, this should always be subject to overall position sizing constraints.
For example before you put on each trade you might rate the strength of your conviction in the trade and allocate a position size accordingly:
To keep yourself disciplined you should try to ensure that no more than one in twenty trades are graded exceptional and allocated 5% of account balance risk. It really should be a rare moment when all the stars align for you.
Notice that the nice thing about dealing in percentages is that it scales. Say you start out with $100,000 but end the year up 50% at $150,000. Now a 1% bet will risk $1,500 rather than $1,000. That makes sense as your capital has grown.
It is extremely common for retail accounts to blow-up by making only 4-5 losing trades because they are leveraged at 50:1 and have taken on far too large a position, relative to their account balance.
Consider that GBPUSD tends to move 1% each day. If you have an account balance of $10k then it would be crazy to take a position of $500k (50:1 leveraged). A 1% move on $500k is $5k.
Two perfectly regular down days in a row — or a single day's move of 2% — and you will receive a margin call from the broker, have the account closed out, and have lost all your money.
Do not let this happen to you. Use position sizing discipline to protect yourself.
Kelly CriterionIf you're wondering - why "about 2%" per trade? - that's a fair question. Why not 0.5% or 10% or any other number?
The Kelly Criterion is a formula that was adapted for use in casinos. If you know the odds of winning and the expected pay-off, it tells you how much you should bet in each round.
This is harder than it sounds. Let's say you could bet on a weighted coin flip, where it lands on heads 60% of the time and tails 40% of the time. The payout is $2 per $1 bet.
Well, absolutely you should bet. The odds are in your favour. But if you have, say, $100 it is less obvious how much you should bet to avoid ruin.
Say you bet $50, the odds that it could land on tails twice in a row are 16%. You could easily be out after the first two flips.
Equally, betting $1 is not going to maximise your advantage. The odds are 60/40 in your favour so only betting $1 is likely too conservative. The Kelly Criterion is a formula that produces the long-run optimal bet size, given the odds.
Applying the formula to forex trading looks like this:
Position size % = Winning trade % - ( (1- Winning trade %) / Risk-reward ratio
If you have recorded hundreds of trades in your journal - see next chapter - you can calculate what this outputs for you specifically.
If you don't have hundreds of trades then let's assume some realistic defaults of Winning trade % being 30% and Risk-reward ratio being 3. The 3 implies your TP is 3x the distance of your stop from entry e.g. 300 pips take profit and 100 pips stop loss.
So that's 0.3 - (1 - 0.3) / 3 = 6.6%.
Hold on a second. 6.6% of your account probably feels like a LOT to risk per trade.This is the main observation people have on Kelly: whilst it may optimise the long-run results it doesn't take into account the pain of drawdowns. It is better thought of as the rational maximum limit. You needn't go right up to the limit!
With a 30% winning trade ratio, the odds of you losing on four trades in a row is nearly one in four. That would result in a drawdown of nearly a quarter of your starting account balance. Could you really stomach that and put on the fifth trade, cool as ice? Most of us could not.
Accordingly people tend to reduce the bet size. For example, let's say you know you would feel emotionally affected by losing 25% of your account.
Well, the simplest way is to divide the Kelly output by four. You have effectively hidden 75% of your account balance from Kelly and it is now optimised to avoid a total wipeout of just the 25% it can see.
This gives 6.6% / 4 = 1.65%. Of course different trading approaches and different risk appetites will provide different optimal bet sizes but as a rule of thumb something between 1-2% is appropriate for the style and risk appetite of most retail traders.
Incidentally be very wary of systems or traders who claim high winning trade % like 80%. Invariably these don't pass a basic sense-check:
How to use stop losses sensiblyStop losses have a bad reputation amongst the retail community but are absolutely essential to risk management. No serious discretionary trader can operate without them.
A stop loss is a resting order, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price. For a recap on the various order types visit this chapter.
The valid concern with stop losses is that disreputable brokers look for a concentration of stops and then, when the market is close, whipsaw the price through the stop levels so that the clients 'stop out' and sell to the broker at a low rate before the market naturally comes back higher. This is referred to as 'stop hunting'.
This would be extremely immoral behaviour and the way to guard against it is to use a highly reputable top-tier broker in a well regulated region such as the UK.
Why are stop losses so important? Well, there is no other way to manage risk with certainty.
You should always have a pre-determined stop loss before you put on a trade. Not having one is a recipe for disaster: you will find yourself emotionally attached to the trade as it goes against you and it will be extremely hard to cut the loss. This is a well known behavioural bias that we'll explore in a later chapter.
Learning to take a loss and move on rationally is a key lesson for new traders.
A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn't care whether you make money or not.
Bruce Kovner, founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates
There is an old saying amongst bank traders which is "losers average losers".
It is tempting, having bought EURUSD and seeing it go lower, to buy more. Your average price will improve if you keep buying as it goes lower. If it was cheap before it must be a bargain now, right? Wrong.
Where does that end? Always have a pre-determined cut-off point which limits your risk. A level where you know the reason for the trade was proved 'wrong' ... and stick to it strictly. If you trade using discretion, use stops.
Picking a clear levelWhere you leave your stop loss is key.
Typically traders will leave them at big technical levels such as recent highs or lows. For example if EURUSD is trading at 1.1250 and the recent month's low is 1.1205 then leaving it just below at 1.1200 seems sensible.
If you were going long, just below the double bottom support zone seems like a sensible area to leave a stop
You want to give it a bit of breathing room as we know support zones often get challenged before the price rallies. This is because lots of traders identify the same zones. You won't be the only one selling around 1.1200.
The "weak hands" who leave their sell stop order at exactly the level are likely to get taken out as the market tests the support. Those who leave it ten or fifteen pips below the level have more breathing room and will survive a quick test of the level before a resumed run-up.
Your timeframe and trading style clearly play a part. Here's a candlestick chart (one candle is one day) for GBPUSD.
If you are putting on a trend-following trade you expect to hold for weeks then you need to have a stop loss that can withstand the daily noise. Look at the downtrend on the chart. There were plenty of days in which the price rallied 60 pips or more during the wider downtrend.
So having a really tight stop of, say, 25 pips that gets chopped up in noisy short-term moves is not going to work for this kind of trade. You need to use a wider stop and take a smaller position size, determined by the stop level.
There are several tools you can use to help you estimate what is a safe distance and we'll look at those in the next section.
There are of course exceptions. For example, if you are doing range-break style trading you might have a really tight stop, set just below the previous range high.
Clearly then where you set stops will depend on your trading style as well as your holding horizons and the volatility of each instrument.
Here are some guidelines that can help:
For example if you stop understanding why a product is going up or down and your fundamental thesis has been confirmed wrong, get out. For example, if you are long because you think the central bank is turning hawkish and AUDUSD is going to play catch up with rates … then you hear dovish noises from the central bank and the bond yields retrace lower and back in line with the currency - close your AUDUSD position. You already know your thesis was wrong. No need to give away more money to the market.
Coming up in part IIEDIT: part II here
Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns
Coming up in part IIISqueezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
Firstly, thanks for the overwhelming comments and feedback. Genuinely really appreciated. I am pleased 500+ of you find it useful.submitted by getmrmarket to Forex [link] [comments]
If you didn't read the first post you can do so here: risk management part I. You'll need to do so in order to make sense of the topic.
As ever please comment/reply below with questions or feedback and I'll do my best to get back to you.
Part II
Letting stops breatheWe talked earlier about giving a position enough room to breathe so it is not stopped out in day-to-day noise.
Let's consider the chart below and imagine you had a trailing stop. It would be super painful to miss out on the wider move just because you left a stop that was too tight.
Imagine being long and stopped out on a meaningless retracement ... ouch!
One simple technique is simply to look at your chosen chart - let's say daily bars. And then look at previous trends and use the measuring tool. Those generally look something like this and then you just click and drag to measure.
For example if we wanted to bet on a downtrend on the chart above we might look at the biggest retracement on the previous uptrend. That max drawdown was about 100 pips or just under 1%. So you'd want your stop to be able to withstand at least that.
If market conditions have changed - for example if CVIX has risen - and daily ranges are now higher you should incorporate that. If you know a big event is coming up you might think about that, too. The human brain is a remarkable tool and the power of the eye-ball method is not to be dismissed. This is how most discretionary traders do it.
There are also more analytical approaches.
Some look at the Average True Range (ATR). This attempts to capture the volatility of a pair, typically averaged over a number of sessions. It looks at three separate measures and takes the largest reading. Think of this as a moving average of how much a pair moves.
For example, below shows the daily move in EURUSD was around 60 pips before spiking to 140 pips in March. Conditions were clearly far more volatile in March. Accordingly, you would need to leave your stop further away in March and take a correspondingly smaller position size.
ATR is available on pretty much all charting systems
Professional traders tend to use standard deviation as a measure of volatility instead of ATR. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Averages are useful but can be misleading when regimes switch (see above chart).
Once you have chosen a measure of volatility, stop distance can then be back-tested and optimised. For example does 2x ATR work best or 5x ATR for a given style and time horizon?
Discretionary traders may still eye-ball the ATR or standard deviation to get a feeling for how it has changed over time and what 'normal' feels like for a chosen study period - daily, weekly, monthly etc.
Reasons to change a stopAs a general rule you should be disciplined and not change your stops. Remember - losers average losers. This is really hard at first and we're going to look at that in more detail later.
There are some good reasons to modify stops but they are rare.
One reason is if another risk management process demands you stop trading and close positions. We'll look at this later. In that case just close out your positions at market and take the loss/gains as they are.
Another is event risk. If you have some big upcoming data like Non Farm Payrolls that you know can move the market +/- 150 pips and you have no edge going into the release then many traders will take off or scale down their positions. They'll go back into the positions when the data is out and the market has quietened down after fifteen minutes or so. This is a matter of some debate - many traders consider it a coin toss and argue you win some and lose some and it all averages out.
Trailing stops can also be used to 'lock in' profits. We looked at those before. As the trade moves in your favour (say up if you are long) the stop loss ratchets with it. This means you may well end up 'stopping out' at a profit - as per the below example.
The mighty trailing stop loss order
It is perfectly reasonable to have your stop loss move in the direction of PNL. This is not exposing you to more risk than you originally were comfortable with. It is taking less and less risk as the trade moves in your favour. Trend-followers in particular love trailing stops.
One final question traders ask is what they should do if they get stopped out but still like the trade. Should they try the same trade again a day later for the same reasons? Nope. Look for a different trade rather than getting emotionally wed to the original idea.
Let's say a particular stock looked cheap based on valuation metrics yesterday, you bought, it went down and you got stopped out. Well, it is going to look even better on those same metrics today. Maybe the market just doesn't respect value at the moment and is driven by momentum. Wait it out.
Otherwise, why even have a stop in the first place?
Entering and exiting winning positionsTake profits are the opposite of stop losses. They are also resting orders, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price.
Imagine I'm long EURUSD at 1.1250. If it hits a previous high of 1.1400 (150 pips higher) I will leave a sell order to take profit and close the position.
The rookie mistake on take profits is to take profit too early. One should start from the assumption that you will win on no more than half of your trades. Therefore you will need to ensure that you win more on the ones that work than you lose on those that don't.
Sad to say but incredibly common: retail traders often take profits way too early
This is going to be the exact opposite of what your emotions want you to do. We are going to look at that in the Psychology of Trading chapter.
Remember: let winners run. Just like stops you need to know in advance the level where you will close out at a profit. Then let the trade happen. Don't override yourself and let emotions force you to take a small profit. A classic mistake to avoid.
The trader puts on a trade and it almost stops out before rebounding. As soon as it is slightly in the money they spook and cut out, instead of letting it run to their original take profit. Do not do this.
Entering positions with limit ordersThat covers exiting a position but how about getting into one?
Take profits can also be left speculatively to enter a position. Sometimes referred to as "bids" (buy orders) or "offers" (sell orders). Imagine the price is 1.1250 and the recent low is 1.1205.
You might wish to leave a bid around 1.2010 to enter a long position, if the market reaches that price. This way you don't need to sit at the computer and wait.
Again, typically traders will use tech analysis to identify attractive levels. Again - other traders will cluster with your orders. Just like the stop loss we need to bake that in.
So this time if we know everyone is going to buy around the recent low of 1.1205 we might leave the take profit bit a little bit above there at 1.1210 to ensure it gets done. Sure it costs 5 more pips but how mad would you be if the low was 1.1207 and then it rallied a hundred points and you didn't have the trade on?!
There are two more methods that traders often use for entering a position.
Scaling in is one such technique. Let's imagine that you think we are in a long-term bulltrend for AUDUSD but experiencing a brief retracement. You want to take a total position of 500,000 AUD and don't have a strong view on the current price action.
You might therefore leave a series of five bids of 100,000. As the price moves lower each one gets hit. The nice thing about scaling in is it reduces pressure on you to pick the perfect level. Of course the risk is that not all your orders get hit before the price moves higher and you have to trade at-market.
Pyramiding is the second technique. Pyramiding is for take profits what a trailing stop loss is to regular stops. It is especially common for momentum traders.
Pyramiding into a position means buying more as it goes in your favour
Again let's imagine we're bullish AUDUSD and want to take a position of 500,000 AUD.
Here we add 100,000 when our first signal is reached. Then we add subsequent clips of 100,000 when the trade moves in our favour. We are waiting for confirmation that the move is correct.
Obviously this is quite nice as we humans love trading when it goes in our direction. However, the drawback is obvious: we haven't had the full amount of risk on from the start of the trend.
You can see the attractions and drawbacks of both approaches. It is best to experiment and choose techniques that work for your own personal psychology as these will be the easiest for you to stick with and build a disciplined process around.
Risk:reward and win ratiosBe extremely skeptical of people who claim to win on 80% of trades. Most traders will win on roughly 50% of trades and lose on 50% of trades. This is why risk management is so important!
Once you start keeping a trading journal you'll be able to see how the win/loss ratio looks for you. Until then, assume you're typical and that every other trade will lose money.
If that is the case then you need to be sure you make more on the wins than you lose on the losses. You can see the effect of this below.
A combination of win % and risk:reward ratio determine if you are profitable
A typical rule of thumb is that a ratio of 1:3 works well for most traders.
That is, if you are prepared to risk 100 pips on your stop you should be setting a take profit at a level that would return you 300 pips.
One needn't be religious about these numbers - 11 pips and 28 pips would be perfectly fine - but they are a guideline.
Again - you should still use technical analysis to find meaningful chart levels for both the stop and take profit. Don't just blindly take your stop distance and do 3x the pips on the other side as your take profit. Use the ratio to set approximate targets and then look for a relevant resistance or support level in that kind of region.
Risk-adjusted returnsNot all returns are equal. Suppose you are examining the track record of two traders. Now, both have produced a return of 14% over the year. Not bad!
The first trader, however, made hundreds of small bets throughout the year and his cumulative PNL looked like the left image below.
The second trader made just one bet — he sold CADJPY at the start of the year — and his PNL looked like the right image below with lots of large drawdowns and volatility.
Would you rather have the first trading record or the second?
If you were investing money and betting on who would do well next year which would you choose? Of course all sensible people would choose the first trader. Yet if you look only at returns one cannot distinguish between the two. Both are up 14% at that point in time. This is where the Sharpe ratio helps .
A high Sharpe ratio indicates that a portfolio has better risk-adjusted performance. One cannot sensibly compare returns without considering the risk taken to earn that return.
If I can earn 80% of the return of another investor at only 50% of the risk then a rational investor should simply leverage me at 2x and enjoy 160% of the return at the same level of risk.
This is very important in the context of Execution Advisor algorithms (EAs) that are popular in the retail community. You must evaluate historic performance by its risk-adjusted return — not just the nominal return. Incidentally look at the Sharpe ratio of ones that have been live for a year or more ...
Otherwise an EA developer could produce two EAs: the first simply buys at 1000:1 leverage on January 1st ; and the second sells in the same manner. At the end of the year, one of them will be discarded and the other will look incredible. Its risk-adjusted return, however, would be abysmal and the odds of repeated success are similarly poor.
Sharpe ratioThe Sharpe ratio works like this:
You don't really need to know how to calculate Sharpe ratios. Good trading software will do this for you. It will either be available in the system by default or you can add a plug-in.
VARVAR is another useful measure to help with drawdowns. It stands for Value at Risk. Normally people will use 99% VAR (conservative) or 95% VAR (aggressive). Let's say you're long EURUSD and using 95% VAR. The system will look at the historic movement of EURUSD. It might spit out a number of -1.2%.
A 5% VAR of -1.2% tells you you should expect to lose 1.2% on 5% of days, whilst 95% of days should be better than that
This means it is expected that on 5 days out of 100 (hence the 95%) the portfolio will lose 1.2% or more. This can help you manage your capital by taking appropriately sized positions. Typically you would look at VAR across your portfolio of trades rather than trade by trade.
Sharpe ratios and VAR don't give you the whole picture, though. Legendary fund manager, Howard Marks of Oaktree, notes that, while tools like VAR and Sharpe ratios are helpful and absolutely necessary, the best investors will also overlay their own judgment.
Investors can calculate risk metrics like VaR and Sharpe ratios (we use them at Oaktree; they're the best tools we have), but they shouldn't put too much faith in them. The bottom line for me is that risk management should be the responsibility of every participant in the investment process, applying experience, judgment and knowledge of the underlying investments.Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital
What he's saying is don't misplace your common sense. Do use these tools as they are helpful. However, you cannot fully rely on them. Both assume a normal distribution of returns. Whereas in real life you get "black swans" - events that should supposedly happen only once every thousand years but which actually seem to happen fairly often.
These outlier events are often referred to as "tail risk". Don't make the mistake of saying "well, the model said…" - overlay what the model is telling you with your own common sense and good judgment.
Coming up in part IIIAvailable here
Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
Welcome to the third and final part of this chapter.submitted by getmrmarket to Forex [link] [comments]
Thank you all for the 100s of comments and upvotes - maybe this post will take us above 1,000 for this topic!
Keep any feedback or questions coming in the replies below.
Before you read this note, please start with Part I and then Part II so it hangs together and makes sense.
Part III
Squeezes and other risksWe are going to cover three common risks that traders face: events; squeezes, asymmetric bets.
EventsEconomic releases can cause large short-term volatility. The most famous is Non Farm Payrolls, which is the most widely watched measure of US employment levels and affects the price of many instruments.On an NFP announcement currencies like EURUSD might jump (or drop) 100 pips no problem.
This is fine and there are trading strategies that one may employ around this but the key thing is to be aware of these releases.You can find economic calendars all over the internet - including on this site - and you need only check if there are any major releases each day or week.
For example, if you are trading off some intraday chart and scalping a few pips here and there it would be highly sensible to go into a known data release flat as it is pure coin-toss and not the reason for your trading. It only takes five minutes each day to plan for the day ahead so do not get caught out by this. Many retail traders get stopped out on such events when price volatility is at its peak.
SqueezesShort squeezes bring a lot of danger and perhaps some opportunity.
The story of VW and Porsche is the best short squeeze ever. Throughout these articles we've used FX examples wherever possible but in this one instance the concept (which is also highly relevant in FX) is best illustrated with an historical lesson from a different asset class.
A short squeeze is when a participant ends up in a short position they are forced to cover. Especially when the rest of the market knows that this participant can be bullied into stopping out at terrible levels, provided the market can briefly drive the price into their pain zone.
There's a reason for the car, don't worry
Hedge funds had been shorting VW stock. However the amount of VW stock available to buy in the open market was actually quite limited. The local government owned a chunk and Porsche itself had bought and locked away around 30%. Neither of these would sell to the hedge-funds so a good amount of the stock was un-buyable at any price.
If you sell or short a stock you must be prepared to buy it back to go flat at some point.
To cut a long story short, Porsche bought a lot of call options on VW stock. These options gave them the right to purchase VW stock from banks at slightly above market price.
Eventually the banks who had sold these options realised there was no VW stock to go out and buy since the German government wouldn't sell its allocation and Porsche wouldn't either. If Porsche called in the options the banks were in trouble.
Porsche called in the options which forced the shorts to buy stock - at whatever price they could get it.
The price squeezed higher as those that were short got massively squeezed and stopped out. For one brief moment in 2008, VW was the world's most valuable company. Shorts were burned hard.
Incredible event
Porsche apparently made $11.5 billion on the trade. The BBC described Porsche as "a hedge fund with a carmaker attached."
If this all seems exotic then know that the same thing happens in FX all the time. If everyone in the market is talking about a key level in EURUSD being 1.2050 then you can bet the market will try to push through 1.2050 just to take out any short stops at that level. Whether it then rallies higher or fails and trades back lower is a different matter entirely.
This brings us on to the matter of crowded trades. We will look at positioning in more detail in the next section. Crowded trades are dangerous for PNL. If everyone believes EURUSD is going down and has already sold EURUSD then you run the risk of a short squeeze.
For additional selling to take place you need a very good reason for people to add to their position whereas a move in the other direction could force mass buying to cover their shorts.
A trading mentor when I worked at the investment bank once advised me:
Always think about which move would cause the maximum people the maximum pain. That move is precisely what you should be watching out for at all times.
Asymmetric lossesAlso known as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. This risk has caught out many a retail trader. Sometimes it is referred to as a "negative skew" strategy.
Ideally what you are looking for is asymmetric risk trade set-ups: that is where the downside is clearly defined and smaller than the upside. What you want to avoid is the opposite.
A famous example of this going wrong was the Swiss National Bank de-peg in 2012.
The Swiss National Bank had said they would defend the price of EURCHF so that it did not go below 1.2. Many people believed it could never go below 1.2 due to this. Many retail traders therefore opted for a strategy that some describe as 'picking up pennies in front of a steam-roller'.
They would would buy EURCHF above the peg level and hope for a tiny rally of several pips before selling them back and keep doing this repeatedly. Often they were highly leveraged at 100:1 so that they could amplify the profit of the tiny 5-10 pip rally.
Then this happened.
Something that changed FX markets forever
The SNB suddenly did the unthinkable. They stopped defending the price. CHF jumped and so EURCHF (the number of CHF per 1 EUR) dropped to new lows very fast. Clearly, this trade had horrific risk : reward asymmetry: you risked 30% to make 0.05%.
Other strategies like naively selling options have the same result. You win a small amount of money each day and then spectacularly blow up at some point down the line.
Market positioningWe have talked about short squeezes. But how do you know what the market position is? And should you care?
Let's start with the first. You should definitely care.
Let's imagine the entire market is exceptionally long EURUSD and positioning reaches extreme levels. This makes EURUSD very vulnerable.
To keep the price going higher EURUSD needs to attract fresh buy orders. If everyone is already long and has no room to add, what can incentivise people to keep buying? The news flow might be good. They may believe EURUSD goes higher. But they have already bought and have their maximum position on.
On the flip side, if there's an unexpected event and EURUSD gaps lower you will have the entire market trying to exit the position at the same time. Like a herd of cows running through a single doorway. Messy.
We are going to look at this in more detail in a later chapter, where we discuss 'carry' trades. For now this TRYJPY chart might provide some idea of what a rush to the exits of a crowded position looks like.
A carry trade position clear-out in action
Knowing if the market is currently at extreme levels of long or short can therefore be helpful.
The CFTC makes available a weekly report, which details the overall positions of speculative traders "Non Commercial Traders" in some of the major futures products. This includes futures tied to deliverable FX pairs such as EURUSD as well as products such as gold. The report is called "CFTC Commitments of Traders" ("COT").
This is a great benchmark. It is far more representative of the overall market than the proprietary ones offered by retail brokers as it covers a far larger cross-section of the institutional market.
Generally market participants will not pay a lot of attention to commercial hedgers, which are also detailed in the report. This data is worth tracking but these folks are simply hedging real-world transactions rather than speculating so their activity is far less revealing and far more noisy.
You can find the data online for free and download it directly here.
Raw format is kinda hard to work with
However, many websites will chart this for you free of charge and you may find it more convenient to look at it that way. Just google "CFTC positioning charts".
But you can easily get visualisations
You can visually spot extreme positioning. It is extremely powerful.
Bear in mind the reports come out Friday afternoon US time and the report is a snapshot up to the prior Tuesday. That means it is a lagged report - by the time it is released it is a few days out of date. For longer term trades where you hold positions for weeks this is of course still pretty helpful information.
As well as the absolute level (is the speculative market net long or short) you can also use this to pick up on changes in positioning.
For example if bad news comes out how much does the net short increase? If good news comes out, the market may remain net short but how much did they buy back?
A lot of traders ask themselves "Does the market have this trade on?" The positioning data is a good method for answering this. It provides a good finger on the pulse of the wider market sentiment and activity.
For example you might say: "There was lots of noise about the good employment numbers in the US. However, there wasn't actually a lot of position change on the back of it. Maybe everyone who wants to buy already has. What would happen now if bad news came out?"
In general traders will be wary of entering a crowded position because it will be hard to attract additional buyers or sellers and there could be an aggressive exit.
If you want to enter a trade that is showing extreme levels of positioning you must think carefully about this dynamic.
Bet correlationRetail traders often drastically underestimate how correlated their bets are.
Through bitter experience, I have learned that a mistake in position correlation is the root of some of the most serious problems in trading. If you have eight highly correlated positions, then you are really trading one position that is eight times as large.
Bruce Kovner of hedge fund, Caxton Associates
For example, if you are trading a bunch of pairs against the USD you will end up with a simply huge USD exposure. A single USD-trigger can ruin all your bets. Your ideal scenario — and it isn't always possible — would be to have a highly diversified portfolio of bets that do not move in tandem.
Look at this chart. Inverted USD index (DXY) is green. AUDUSD is orange. EURUSD is blue.
Chart from TradingView
So the whole thing is just one big USD trade! If you are long AUDUSD, long EURUSD, and short DXY you have three anti USD bets that are all likely to work or fail together.
The more diversified your portfolio of bets are, the more risk you can take on each.
There's a really good video, explaining the benefits of diversification from Ray Dalio.
A systematic fund with access to an investable universe of 10,000 instruments has more opportunity to make a better risk-adjusted return than a trader who only focuses on three symbols. Diversification really is the closest thing to a free lunch in finance.
But let's be pragmatic and realistic. Human retail traders don't have capacity to run even one hundred bets at a time. More realistic would be an average of 2-3 trades on simultaneously. So what can be done?
For example:
The key thing is to start thinking about a portfolio of bets and what each new trade offers to your existing portfolio of risk. Will it diversify or amplify a current exposure?
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limitsOne common mistake is to get bored and restless and put on crap trades. This just means trades in which you have low conviction.
It is perfectly fine not to trade. If you feel like you do not understand the market at a particular point, simply choose not to trade.
Flat is a position.
Do not waste your bullets on rubbish trades. Only enter a trade when you have carefully considered it from all angles and feel good about the risk. This will make it far easier to hold onto the trade if it moves against you at any point. You actually believe in it.
Equally, you need to set monthly limits. A standard limit might be a 10% account balance stop per month. At that point you close all your positions immediately and stop trading till next month.
Be strict with yourself and walk away
Let's assume you started the year with $100k and made 5% in January so enter Feb with $105k balance. Your stop is therefore 10% of $105k or $10.5k . If your account balance dips to $94.5k ($105k-$10.5k) then you stop yourself out and don't resume trading till March the first.
Having monthly calendar breaks is nice for another reason. Say you made a load of money in January. You don't want to start February feeling you are up 5% or it is too tempting to avoid trading all month and protect the existing win. Each month and each year should feel like a clean slate and an independent period.
Everyone has trading slumps. It is perfectly normal. It will definitely happen to you at some stage. The trick is to take a break and refocus. Conserve your capital by not trading a lot whilst you are on a losing streak. This period will be much harder for you emotionally and you'll end up making suboptimal decisions. An enforced break will help you see the bigger picture.
Put in place a process before you start trading and then it'll be easy to follow and will feel much less emotional. Remember: the market doesn't care if you win or lose, it is nothing personal.
When your head has cooled and you feel calm you return the next month and begin the task of building back your account balance.
That's a wrap on risk managementThanks for taking time to read this three-part chapter on risk management. I hope you enjoyed it. Do comment in the replies if you have any questions or feedback.
Remember: the most important part of trading is not making money. It is not losing money. Always start with that principle. I hope these three notes have provided some food for thought on how you might approach risk management and are of practical use to you when trading. Avoiding mistakes is not a sexy tagline but it is an effective and reliable way to improve results.
Next up I will be writing about an exciting topic I think many traders should look at rather differently: news trading. Please follow on here to receive notifications and the broad outline is below.
News Trading Part I
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
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MLB: Phillies manager fired
PHILADELPHIA -- Charlie Manuel was fired as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday, with his team way out of the pennant race and in a tailspin since the All-Star break.
Manuel, the winningest manager in franchise history, was replaced by Hall of Famer and former Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg, the Phillies' third-base coach. Sandberg managed the Phillies' Triple-A team at Lehigh Valley the previous two seasons.
''I never quit nothing and I didn't resign,'' Manuel said, making it clear this decision came from the front office.
With Manuel seated to his left, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. broke down in tears after making the announcement and saying the former manager has a job with the team if he wants it.
''You people may not know the relationship I've had with Charlie. He's a special person. This is difficult for me. I hope he stays in our organization,'' Amaro said.
Amaro said he informed Manuel of the decision not to extend his contract earlier this week in Atlanta. Manuel managed against the Braves on Wednesday night knowing it was his last game.
Sandberg takes over beginning with Friday night's game against the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers.
''These guys are professional players, they're getting paid well,'' said Sandberg, who was introduced at a news conference before the game. ''Sometimes players have to dig deeper, play with pride, play with heart and or the name on the front of the uniform.''
The Phillies have lost 19 of 24 since last month's All-Star break. They are in fourth place and 20 games out of first in the NL East.
The 69-year-old Manuel has been a folksy presence in the Phillies' dugout since the beginning of the 2005 season. He led Philadelphia to the franchise's second World Series title in 2008 and brought the team back to the series in 2009, when they lost to the Yankees in six games.
Manuel was 780-636 with the Phillies and won five straight NL East titles from 2007-2011. He also spent three years as manager with the Cleveland Indians, winning the AL Central in 2001.
Even with an aging roster, the Phillies were expected to contend in the NL East this season, but the team has fallen apart.
Two-time Cy Young Award winner Roy Halladay has missed most of the season with an injury. Slugger Ryan Howard also has been out with an injury. High-priced reliever Jonathan Papelbon has struggled to close, and apart from Chase Utley and Dominic Brown the Phillies haven't hit much.


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Day 36: My brother-in-law's accident, part 1
Today I turn the blog over to my middle sister, Jaquita Lilich, to tell you about her husband's terrible accident — the tearing of the pieces. Tomorrow, she'll be back to talk about the mending. Be blessed…
Tony and I have been married 31 years and have had a great marriage. I didn't say perfect, I said great. On Feb. 19, 2004, our lives changed forever.
Tony called and said he was on his way home from work. I was babysitting our friends' 4-month-old baby and our 15-year-old daughter, Jessica, and her boyfriend were there with me. I said to Tony, "I hope I don't burn our dinner. You know there is a baby here and I might get side tracked playing with her." He said, "It wouldn't be the first time I ate a burned dinner and pretended to like it." I replied, "Don't make me hang up on you," and I did (playfully).
Thirty minutes later I was putting the dinner on the table, but instead of Tony walking through the door, Jessica came in from her bedroom. She looked like she had seen a ghost… She said, "Mom, some lady just called my cell from Dad's phone and said that Dad has been in a horrible wreck! She said not to worry that she would stay with him until help came and that the highway patrolman would be calling you."
Just as if on cue, the house phone rang. It was a highway patrolman. He asked if this was Mrs. Lilich. I said, "Yes."
He asked if we owned a green Ford supercrew. I said, "Yes."
He hesitated and asked, "How many people are in the vehicle right now?" I thought that was an odd question, but I said, "Just Tony, why?" He said, "Because we don't expect to find any survivors. I just needed to tell the rescuers how many bodies to look for."
I somehow remained composed enough to ask where the wreck was and to give him my cell phone number to reach me. I told him I was on my way. I was hoping that the woman would stay with him. I didn't want him to be alone.
Jessica just looked at me and said, "Go find Dad. I will take care of everything else. Just let me know which hospital they are taking him to. The woman said he would be OK." I said, "I will, but the patrolman wasn't so positive." Jessica said, "But the woman was with him and said he was going to be OK."
When I got within a few miles of the wreck the patrolman called me again. He said, "The paramedics are at the truck. He is alive. They are cutting him from the vehicle and will transport him to Tulsa Regional Medical Center." I said, "I will meet him there."
My mind was racing. I don't know how our minds do that in an emergency but I was thinking a million thoughts at once. When he arrived at the hospital he was semi-conscious. They took him immediately to begin assessing his injuries. He was strapped to a back board and had a neck brace on. He had cuts all over and was covered in blood… but he was alive. There was hope!
Several hours later the patrolman came by to check on him and to return his wallet. I asked him about the woman who made the phone call; I wanted to thank her for staying with Tony. He said there wasn't a woman there. The wreckage had been too dangerous to approach and no one was allowed in until haz-mat had done their work.
Tony squeezed my hand and I looked over at him. He said, "There WAS a woman. I couldn't see her very well because the light was too bright. She talked to me and told me stay awake, that help was on the way. She told me that she had talked to Jessica and told her that she was with me. She said that I was injured pretty badly and she knew that I was hurting but I had to trust her and have hope." Then, he closed his eyes again.
The patrolman put his hand on my shoulder and said to me, "Ma'am, I stand corrected. It seems as though there was an angel present there tonight. There is no other explanation. No one should have survived that accident."
Join us tomorrow to hear how my sister holds on to hope in the aftermath — nine years later.


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US jobless claims drop to 5-year low of 330,000
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid fell last week to the lowest level in five years, evidence that employers are cutting fewer jobs and may step up hiring.
The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly unemployment benefit applications dropped 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 330,000. That's the fewest since January 2008.
The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell to 351,750. That's also the lowest in nearly five years.
The decline may reflect the government's difficulty adjusting its numbers to account for layoffs after the holiday shopping season. Layoffs spike in the second week of January and then plummet. The department seeks to adjust for those seasonal trends, but the figures can still be volatile.
If the trend holds up, fewer applications would suggest the job market is improving.
"Encouraging news on the U.S. jobs front, even when you remove all of the noise," said Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets. "Weekly data are noisy, particularly at this time of year, so keep that in mind."
Applications are a proxy for layoffs. They have fluctuated between 360,000 and 390,000 for most of last year. At the same time, employers added an average of 153,000 jobs a month. That's just been enough to slowly push down the unemployment rate, which fell 0.7 percentage points last year to 7.8 percent.
There have been other positive signs for the economy and job market.
The once-battered housing sector is recovering, which is boosting construction and home prices. Home builders started work in 2012 on the most new homes in four years. And sales of previously occupied homes reached their highest level in five years last year. Still, home building and sales remain below the levels consistent with a healthy economy.
More home building will likely increase job growth. In December, the economy gained 30,000 construction jobs — the most in 15 months. And economists expect construction firms to add more jobs this year as the housing recovery strengthens.
Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight, forecasts that construction companies will add 140,000 jobs this year, up from a meager 18,000 in 2012.
The number of people continuing to claim benefits is also falling. There were nearly 5.7 million people receiving unemployment aid in the week ended Jan. 5, the latest data available. That's down from almost 5.9 million in the previous week.
The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the July-September quarter. But economists believe activity slowed considerably in the October-December quarter to a rate below 2 percent or less, in part because companies cut back on restocking.
Less restocking leads to slower factory production, which weighs on economic growth.


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With fans far and wide clamoring for a Teddy Roosevelt victory in presidents race #500, the Washington Nationals sent a clear and decisive message Saturday night:
Don't even think about it.
A sellout crowd of 42,662 was on hand in anticipation of the 500th running of the fabled Nationals Park presidents race, and the Nationals used the occasion to put a stop to all speculation about Teddy's fate.
When the gates opened for the fourth inning race, Roosevelt took the field first, trailed only by Abe Lincoln. Teddy held a big lead through the home stretch, but George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were waiting there in ambush.
Washington got there first, leaving his feet to deliver a devastating head-to-head hit. If it were the NFL, the father of our country would have been issued a 3-game suspension. A chorus of boos rained down from the stands as Abe Lincoln crossed the finish line.
"That is bush league, bro," said Nationals play-by-play man Bob Carpenter on the MASN broadcast. Color commentator Ray Knight added "That is weak."
From the stands to the broadcast booth, the Nationals' message was received, and it was less than welcome.
Finish line photos courtesy of Jenn Jenson/Nats Fangirl
Overhead Twitter photo by @Darastar
Finish line video courtesy YouTube member lfahome


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